We still had some hard stretches of road to travel. The Tigh Valley grade was so steep that it seemed as if the horses would fall over backward. Even the drivers walked. With five horses hitched to each wagon, men ahead with ropes to hold down the wagon tongues, and men behind to thrust blocks of wood under the wheels should the wagons start backward, they struggled up the awful grade. We climbed the hill well to the side of the road so as not to be in the way if anything about the wagons should slip. Glad we were when at last all were at the top.

Later we found ourselves winding along the Deschutes Road, a road hewn from solid rock and so narrow that in places there were but four inches outside the wheel track. Father was nearly frantic. Carrie with her three-horse team was ahead, and in no way could he pass the wagon to drive for her. A three-horse team, hitched as these were with two wheel horses and one leader, is a very hard team to handle. The cliff was so steep that he could not climb past her on the upper side and there was no room on the outside over the precipice beneath which the river rushed. The wagon was loaded in such a manner, with bedding, stove, everything, piled high and the cover drawn tightly over all, that no one could climb over it from behind. There was nothing to do but watch her as she drove ahead, hugging the bank. The horses, however, were no more anxious than she to take that dreadful plunge.

Far below, so far that they looked like toy people, I remember seeing a band of Indians catching some salmon and drying them about little smoky fires.

At last we reached Barlow Bridge, high, high above the rugged river. This was the end of the terrible canyon road. At the gate on the farther side, Father paid the toll and we drove through.

Here for the first time on the journey, our right of way was challenged. As we drove through the gate an old billy goat disputed our right to pass. He looked so absurd, dancing about, his head nodding up and down as he threatened the big horses, that we all had to laugh. Evidently he did not like our appearance. Finally, rather than be driven over, he edged to the side of the road and we left him and his little band of goats behind, and headed for Barlow Pass.

We were now nearing our journey's end. Three days at the most and we would reach Salem. Father and Mother would meet friends from whom they had been separated long. We camped that night near the summit of the Cascade Mountains, Mount Hood gleaming near us.

About our camp many of the trees had been felled. The stumps were a puzzling sight to me. Fully twenty feet above the ground they had been chopped off with axes. I asked Father how it could have been done.

He said they must have been cut in the winter when the snow lay on the ground. "Probably it was done by miners or prospectors," he said. "Wagons could not get through the pass when the snow was deep."

That night five men camped near us. When some of them came to our fire, we were glad to hear them talk of the new country. More and more anxious we were growing to hear of the place that was to be home to us. New lands have strange tale to tell and the people in them are often great storytellers. Our meeting with these men was to give us a tale to tell of our own.

In the morning as we were preparing to leave the spot, one of the men went to the back of Father's wagon and from it took his heavy saddlebags. They were very heavy, too.

"Why did you put those in there?" Father demanded.

"I put them there so that I would find them this morning," said the man, "I'm hoping to reach Salem alive and with them."

"You had no right to put them there. If they had been stolen, the blame would have fallen on me. You had no right to make me responsible." The man laughed. "I'm not afraid of you," he said, "but for days I haven't dared get separated for one minute from that crowd of men. I'd lose my life if one of those men had the ghost of a chance. I knew he'd never think of your wagon, so I put my gold in there."

Father was very angry. "I have my family here," he said, "and you endanger them in that way."

The man shook his head. "The gold was as safe there as if in a vault, and your family in no more danger. It was the only safe place."We never heard of the man's being robbed, so we always supposed he reached Salem with his gold.